Discussion of public health and health care policy, from a public health perspective. The U.S. spends more on medical services than any other country, but we get less for it. Major reasons include lack of universal access, unequal treatment, and underinvestment in public health and social welfare. We will critically examine the economics, politics and sociology of health and illness in the U.S. and the world.

Thursday, May 26, 2016

A Couple of Observations about Wrongdoing

Those of us old enough to remember Whitewater would prefer to forget. In a pistachio shell, the Clintons, while in Arkansas, invested some money in a real estate deal. The promoter turned out to be a sleazebag, and they lost their investment. That is all.

But the New York Times, which for reasons unknown hated the Clintons, produced a long-form investigative piece (written by Jeff Gerth, whose inexplicabe, irrational hatred for Hillary Clinton is as boundless as Donald Trump's ego), which insinuated that the Clintons had somehow been guilty of wrongdoing in the affair. The piece actually made no sense and added up to nothing, but was extremely convoluted and sufficiently difficult to follow that few readers bothered to deconstruct it and figure out that it was a complete nothingburger.

Michael Tomasky tells the story of what happened next. Briefly, a hyperpartisan pathological liar named Kenneth Starr wound up being appointed as a special prosecutor by a panel controlled by ultraconservative judges, and spent 3 years persecuting and tormenting everybody associated with the Clintons and finding absolutely nothing. Then Monica Lewinsky happened, so he switched to that, and we got impeachment.

Starr is now the president of Baylor University. He has suddenly taken to praising Bill Clinton for some inexplicable reason -- to which Clinton's friend say no thanks. He has also (okay, allegedly) swept sexual assaults by Baylor football players under the rug, for which he may (we are all desperately hoping) end up losing his job.*